Everyone at the snap, or one at a time — you choose

Until now, a play you drew always animated the same way: each player moved in the order you drew them, one after another. That is right for a set piece you want to walk somebody through. It is wrong for most of what a coach actually draws.

The arithmetic was the problem. The moving part of a play is shared out between however many players you moved, so the more of them there are, the less each one gets. On an eleven-man play that is three tenths of a second of movement and three and a half seconds standing still, each player twitching in turn. That is not a play. It is a queue.

The control

Under the playback controls there is now a choice: together, or in drawn order.

Pick together and everybody sets off on the first frame and arrives at the end, the way they do at a snap, a kick-off, or the moment a press is triggered. Pick drawn order and you get the old behaviour, which is still the better one for a play you are explaining a step at a time — a set piece where the run that matters is the third one.

You can switch back and forth as often as you like. Nothing you drew is lost either way.

Football starts on together

A new football play now starts on together, because at the snap everyone goes at once and a gridiron play animated one man at a time does not look like football. Every other sport starts where it always did, on drawn order.

This is only about new plays. Nothing you have already made has changed. A play you saved last week, a link you sent to a parent, a printed card with a QR code on it — all of them animate exactly as they did before, and will keep doing so unless you open one and change it yourself.

It travels with the play

The choice is part of the play, not a setting on your account. Send somebody the link and they see it the way you set it. The same is true of a play card's QR code, a saved play you reopen on your phone, and anything you export.